What it means
Recto and verso are the two faces of a leaf. In a left-to-right language the recto is the right-hand page of an open spread and the verso is the left-hand page, the back of the previous leaf. The terms are Latin — recto folio, "on the right of the leaf", and verso folio, "on the turned leaf".
The convention that governs almost all book layout follows from them: rectos carry odd folios (1, 3, 5) and versos even ones. Because a reader's eye lands on the recto first, the important starts go there — the half title, the title page, the dedication, each part title and, in traditional typesetting, every chapter opener. When the previous chapter ends on a recto, a blank verso is inserted to make that possible.
In right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew the physical sides swap, but the logic — the first-seen page is the recto — is unchanged.
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